Capacity for Urban Adaptation to Climate Change: Case Study of Erzurum and Kayseri
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ICUC9 - 9th International Conference on Urban Climate jointly with 12th Symposium on the Urban Environment Capacity for Urban Adaptation to Climate Change: Case Study of Erzurum and Kayseri Defne Dursun1 1 Urban Policy Planning and Local Governments, Institute of Social Sciences, METU, Ankara, Turkey,[email protected] dated : 15 June 2015 Defne Dursun Abstract Climate change is a growing problem for urban areas, which should be held by the governance institutions with growing significance. In this process, there is a great need for greater capacity for adapting climate change in urban areas through effective urban policies. However, the research has shown that even if the related bodies had shown some eagerness on urban adaptation, the required steps to reduce the vulnerability of urban areas and urban populations could not be taken. Thus, it is obvious that there is a great need for adapting climate change and thus built a capacity for this both through political institutions and civil society. Turkey started to experience an important construction boom after 2004. It was aimed to trigger the economic development owing to the backward and forward linkages of construction sector. Urban transformation is used as a tool to ease and control the building processes of the cities. Through these urban transformation processes, most of the urban areas had been re-built. This paper aims to question whether this rapid and intense change experienced on the urban built environments could have been used as an opportunity for the climate change adaptation of the related cities. The recent urban policies and implementations of local governments of Kayseri and Erzurum will be analysed in this regard. Thus, analysing the climate adaptation capacities of two cities (Kayseri and Erzurum); that are differing through their sizes and economic structures; it is aimed to put forward the capacity of Turkish urban policy to adapt climate change. 1. Introduction When the urban policy literature is analysed for the last three decades, it is seen that climate change and adaptation strategies become important especially for developed countries. While, in the first stage, need for climate change adaptation strategies are discussed, strategic steps for the adaptation are evaluated in later. As it is mostly emphasized in scientific studies related to the future scenarios, Turkey has high sensitivity for climate change. All related maps showing the future scenarios demonstrate that Turkey is in the group of countries have serious risks and become red in the following years. Cities are the most important factor negatively contributing the climate change in this process. In developed country examples, cities have started to promote climate sensitive strategies for urbanization and other policies in their city scale scenarios. Stuttgart, Gothenburg, Stockholm, Hong-Kong and Freiburg are the cities can be given as well-known examples having this type of strategies. When the list of cities in the world concentrated on climate change and adaptation strategies are analysed, it is observed that design based factors such as urban form, geometry, density and settlement pattern are evaluated on the one hand, and on the other hand future scenarios, predictions, sustainability and quality of life become the issue for discussions. 2. Climate adaptation strategies and urban policies Climate change has become important policy issue for developed countries and in parallel with these studies, adaptation strategies has come to the agenda of urban policy makers. For Turkey, we can observe limited studies about measuring climate change. As it is known, the Earth’s climate is becoming warmer, which is a big risk for Turkey. Since the beginning of the twentieth century the global mean surface temperature has increased by about 0.89oC. In the last fifty years, especially for summer time, temperature has increased 1.5 oC in Turkey. Based on different scenarios, climate scientists estimate increases between 1.5 and 4.5oC by the end of the present century for the world (IPCC, 2013). Turkey is in the list of countries, which will be profoundly affected by this change. In this process, temperature increase will have important effects on the environment, society, and the economy. Several factors such as distributions of population, urbanization, industry, agricultural areas and water resources may influence the impacts of climate change. As it is illustrated in Figure 1, temperatures are rising almost everywhere in Turkey through last 50 years. While summer temperatures have seen the most increase, precipitation has not changed significantly except for the north-eastern parts. The changes in mountain glacial retreat (about 10m/year) and streamflow timing also reflects a response to increasing temperatures. Meanwhile, the statistics reveal an increase in the number of natural ICUC9 - 9th International Conference on Urban Climate jointly with 12th Symposium on the Urban Environment hazards experienced in Turkey in this period. Already, Şen (2013) states that a higher number of natural hazards is expected when the temperature is higher than average. Figure 1. Past changes in hydro-climatic variables of Turkey (Source:Şen, 2013 p.12) Above summarized changes in the last 50 years, emphasize the importance of climate change for Turkey. The policies on climate change have started to gain a seat in national policies. However, the consideration of cities’ adaptation to the climate change is still a question for Turkish urban policies. Before investigating the so-called policies on case cities, it is important to put forward the urban design-based factors for reflecting the existing situations of the cities within a wide range from physical structure to policy orientations; which also reflects their capacities on adaptation to climate change. In this study, design based factors summarized by the Milosovicova (2010) will be used by combining and excluding some of the elements. Size of the city is excluded due to the discussions about its reliability on the explanation of the correlation between city size and urban heat island. Water is the other factor excluded because of the inexistence of the natural water surfaces in urban areas of both Kayseri and Erzurum. Other design-based factors used in this study have a decisive role in determining the situation of urban climate. Urban geometry: Building height to street width (H/W) ratio and orientation of the streets Density and Compactness Settlement patterns and the particular land use (Dursun & Yavaş, 2015) These factors demonstrating the existing situation of cities is meaningful only when they used cumulatively through various strategies and actions regarding land-use and transportation policies, massing and building controls, open space/outdoor living areas and public amenities. 3. Case Study Areas: Erzurum and Kayseri Planning histories of settlements demonstrates two important issues: the power of localities on implementing the policies and the development path of physical development of the urban built area (a predictable development through long-range plans/decisions or fragmented developments catalyzed with ad-hoc decisions). Erzurum and Kayseri cases indicates different results of urban development regarding the capacity of localities to create powerful rules for the development game and the power of them to implement these rules throughout years. Development tradition of Turkey does not involves sensibility on the climate or climate related issues. However, these issues started to became a part of the planning processes. So, despite having no examples of climate sensitive planning, the willpower of localities are thought to be important for the implementation of future adaptation policies. Kayseri uses two important tools for implementing urban plans. “Land Deals” is used since the first plan of the city, 1945 onwards; and “Free Work” is used since the second half of 1980s. Owing to these tools, development of Kayseri follows the main structure created by the second plan made at 1975. On the contrary, Erzurum failed to develop an appropriate tool that will give power to the decision makers. The only tool to ICUC9 - 9th International Conference on Urban Climate jointly with 12th Symposium on the Urban Environment implement the urban plans and other decisions regarding built environment is the “18th item” on Development Law (#3194) which has no local issues. The history of planning of Erzurum is full of debates on development and interruptions at implementation of plans. Since 1939, Erzurum is subject to four or five different plans and developed without a plan for several years between each new plan. The historical analysis of Erzurum’s urban form indicates a compact development. However, urban development transforms to a linear form in the direction of north-east to south west through the main arterial roads. The fragmented development of built environment and the increase in the building tendency creates a development pressure on the meadow that was once limiting the development of the city from the north. Because of the above-mentioned reasons regarding planning history, nearly each settlement region of Erzurum displays different characteristics regarding their densities, street orientations, height and width ratios, positioning of buildings and streets regarding the prevailing wind direction (from southwest to north east), etc. Figure 2. Urban macroform and settlement areas of Erzurum (Dursun&Çodur, 2015) The city center of Erzurum displays a compact form with buildings having five to seven storeys and one or two old housing areas. The density of historical places at the city center characterizes the city. Streets are oriented from south to north in this high-density region (nearly 800person/ha). The hard winter conditions at the city resulted with narrow streets and very few outdoor areas, historically. However, the continuity of this tendency even after the elevation of the building storeys lead the blocking of the wind and resulted with an important air pollution problem. The lack of open space areas together with the city center’s surfaces’ being hundred percent sealed increases the risk for climate change.